


Stone Cold

by HarrietHopkirk



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Community: HPFT, Family, Minor Character, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Other, Pottermore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-04 19:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1791001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarrietHopkirk/pseuds/HarrietHopkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something like this night was too beautiful to give up for a little comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone Cold

I) She looks across the white expanses of the pure, still world, blissfully happy that there was nothing and no one to be seen, but for the snow, the dark sky, and the baby in her arms. It seems to stretch forever; a vast eternity of heaven and silence at her disposal and a vast eternity of time to spend wasted.

The snow falls, silent and inviolable, and covers and drapes itself across the sleeping village. She dare not ruin the sanctity of the scene, and so she appreciates it, her back pressed against the tree, her baby clutched to her chest. Tombstones and gravestones and still, staring angels emerge out of the night, threatening to cut her with a sweep of their stone scythes and a prick of their unyielding thorns. Great wings of frozen stone flutter around her. Elegies of people past speak to her out of the cold.

And if he came, if he came sweeping down with a whisper of cloaks and a handshake, she would join him, greet him like an equal, and be taken to wherever she needs to be. She would leave the bundle of cloth and baby alone, with her husband, and be lifted to the heavens.

The child cries as if it can read her thoughts, as if her mother leaving her would be the worst thing in a world filled with prejudice and secrets. The woman wonders how her loving husband – the father of her baby – would react to the child’s bizarre behaviour, the seemingly magical occurrences that happened around her, once his wife had gone. She wonders whether he would ever guess what she was.

II) The baby whimpers in the quiet of the house, and Isobel can feel her husband stir beside her as she stares up in the darkness of the ceiling. She hopes that the sound will cease, that the baby will return to the peaceful slumber that it can so cruelly steal from others. But it persists, the sound growing louder and louder and Isobel slips from between the warm sheets. She must be the mother. She must care for her children and her husband. They must never be led astray.

Her child is still yelling and screaming when Isobel opens the door to her room; its face is a mask of hot red flesh, wet with streaming tears, mouth open in a toothless grimace. The mother recoils slightly, frightened by this small demon that saps her time and energy. But as much as she retreats, she cannot help but return, closer to her child, her own life and blood.

Isobel takes her gently in her arms, and begins to sooth and sway. As a beauteous melody springs from her lips, the baby quietens, succumbing to her lullaby. The hallowed house returns to its state of revered rest. She sees toys – toys she had placed on upper shelves – in the baby’s crib, and she begins to cry. She would have to tell him soon, it seemed. He would have to find out. The tears drip onto her baby’s soft white head as it disappears into sleep.

III) Through the falling snow, she can see the lights of the house shining. They are so close. She wonders if he can hear the baby crying, whether he can hear the sound of the child’s throat contorting until it gets what it wants, until it is taken from this cold place and drowned in warmth.

Isobel knows, eventually, she will give her what she wants. She will love her forever, and this envy and this hatred will pass. The child writhes in the blanket, its face red and shining, a far cry from the purest white of its sleeping features, more like the devil that pulls the jealously from within.

She was certain that once she had been able to form coherent thoughts, but now it was as if her senses had been infused with a static that wouldn't cease. In this moment, it seemed that her brain had reverted to its simplest form: I am a witch, she thought – as reminder, as epithet. But even as she thought the words, the white noise – the baby’s cry - distorted them.

She closes her eyes and tries to surrender herself to that white noise.

IV) She professes her faith, with her husband standing close and holding their baby tight in his arms. She is silent for him, a perfect, peaceful cherub of serenity. She even smiles, and gurgles happily at the holy water splashing in the stone basin. The long white skirt of the child’s robe dares to touch the surface of the water, and Isobel admires the ripples as the prayer and proclamations continue on. She is barely listening now, his words drowning in the water.

Isobel stares out at the congregation, at their expectant faces, decorated by the rainbow cast upon them by the stained glass window. They dared to judge and jeer at her daughter, at her daughter’s name. Minerva. Far too interesting and far too powerful for their small and vapid minds. The minister finishes speaking, and she sees their faces turn from grins, from smiles of delight, into masks of shock, of confusion, as her daughter is touched by the water that now runs red.

“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

And the choir begins to sing, a beauteous melody, but it cannot hide the chatter and whispers of the villagers, of her friends and enemies. The murmurs are infused with rumours and suspicion, of the mysterious lights from the manse, of the child that can turn water into wine.

V) “Isobel?” The voice cracked the night air, breaking the sacrosanct silence. She turned at the sound of her name, and the noise dissipated. A pair of caring eyes looked down at her, and she opened her mouth to speak but found she could not.

“Do you need help?” The words are harmonic, a beauteous melody. A white hand appears out of the gloom, clothed in tartan; a terrifying gesture of friendship that Isobel can’t handle.

The baby is still crying, and she can sense the white noise returning at the back of her mind, and suddenly her vision is filled with the sympathetic eyes of the woman standing by her, and her hand. The tartan becomes black silk, and the wind pulls it across the night, obscuring the snow, a sacrilege. The basket becomes a scythe, as sharp as the tongue that whispers insults and spreads secrets.

She takes the proffered hand and she stands. She is weightless. The black silk spirals and twirls around them, the white noise growing ever louder, the cries of her child, lying on the ground, and the smooth, mellifluous call of the darkness…

“Isobel!”

And it is healed. The black gives way onto the holy white and the eyes are wide now, and scared. The hand withdraws into the tartan. The baby still cries, but Isobel finds herself not caring: the child she so loathes, the child she so envies, the baby she hates but also must love – it tries to speak to her from behind its tears, and she turns to listen.

It was possible, it seemed, to be jealous of something so small and innocent, something as pure as the snow that surrounded them. She looks down into the face of her child, at her bright rosy cheeks and creamy soft head, and she felt her love and affection battle with her envy and her wariness. The baby blinks once, and wraps its impossibly small hand around her finger, and she felt the feelings cease.

“Are you all right?”

Isobel smiles, a whisper of an apology on her lips. She is not feeling well, she says, and the woman nods – the excuse seems to satisfy her. She should return home, to the minister, to the hearth, before the fog settles. They both look up at the sky. The stars are swallowed by the blackness and the woman continues to witter, her basket filled with food and blankets. Isobel nods politely, but she can only feel the soft touch of her child on her finger.

The stranger disappears into the night, her footsteps another blight on the perfect sheath of snow.

VI) His gaze lifts to hers, but then returns to the ground. His hands are shaking as they tug on his clerical collar, his need for air increasing. Several droplets of sweat appear on his brow. He stands, goes to the window, and opens it. The air is cold but the sun shines.

“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,” her husband recites, his back still turned to her, looking out across the garden of the manse, “Deuteronomy 18:10.”

The box still lies on the table, and her wand is clutched in her grasp. He asked her to prove it, and she had produced a single red rose from the type of her wand. He had held it in his hands for a long time, and Isobel saw the questions and emotions dance across his face. He was so honest, so easy to read, and she had kept this secret from him for so long.

Suddenly, her mind is rocked by a memory so vivid and so sharp that she believes she has been transported through time. Her husband with his hair swept across his face by the battering winds, salty sea spray on her tongue - their fingers entwined, golden rings glinting in the darkening night. She remembers how she felt then; she had broken the trust of her parents, left them with rage flickering in their eyes, but she had revelled in her husband’s love and his comforting touch. 

He seemed more important than them, at that point and still, but as he stares at her, she questions it. She can see that the trust between them - once so strong, once so alive before the birth of her daughter – had broken. He closes the window carefully, aware of the people moving towards the church door and how his wife’s voice could carry. The bells begin to ring, a merry peal of music that calls him away from her and to his beloved flock.

“But I still love you,” he says.

VII) And Isobel wants so desperately to feel alive, to be the living thing amongst the mass of dead, to feel flickers and flares of magic spiral through her mind and reignite her whole body. She no longer wants to feel the harsh stab of jealousy or the bitter rush of melancholy; she wants to feel the soft stroke of love that she knows she possesses.

She pulls a thin wand from underneath her shawl and mutters a spell. The sound ceases and her baby gulps, as if for air. The magic twirls and caresses her fingers, and she feels more at ease; more at home than in the house across the ground where she is welcome and warmed, where the light and love of her husband embrace her but do not comfort her.

Her whole body was numb now, from lying in the snow, but she dared not move an inch, for fear of breaking the soothing peace. She did not mind, though; something like this night was too beautiful to give up for a little comfort.

Isobel bundles her baby safely in her arms, and wrapped her cloak around them both, a protection against the harsh wind and the settling fog. The tears have stopped, and her child smiles.

In the last moments before the dark wiped out the pure white snow - which held mostly perfect, though for one broken, shattered, cry - she wondered if the pain and envy that had brought her here, out into the cold, had felt the same as when the night had been broken.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the new information from Pottermore about Minerva McGonagall and her mother, Isobel Ross.
> 
> The Bible quotes: “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,” is from Deutronomy 18.10 and “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned," is from Mark 16.16, both from the King James Bible.


End file.
